Overcoming the COVID pandemic impact on the demand for coal linked to economic activity, Singareni Collieries Company Ltd. (SCCL) has achieved the highest-ever production in its annals with mining of 65.02 million tonnes (MT) during the just concluded 2021-22 fiscal.
However, the public sector coal company has fallen short of the production target of 68 MT for the year by about 3 MT, although coal mined in 2021-22 is 28.56% higher compared to the production of 50.58 MT in 2020-21, which too was a pandemic-affected year. Compared to the pre-pandemic 2018-19 (64.40 MT), the production in 2021-22 is higher by hardly 1%.
During 2019-20, when mining was hit due to the pandemic in the last week of March, production was about 1.5% less compared to 2021-22.
According to sources in SCCL, of the 44 mines being operated by the company, the Kothagudem area mines that include mines in Yellandu and Manuguru areas have achieved the record production of nearly 13.2 MT or about a fifth of the total coal extracted by the company during the just concluded fiscal.
“We have made all out efforts to scale production during the last quarter to reach the target. The efforts were successful to some extent as the production during the last three months contributed 28.47% of the total coal mined during the year,” a senior executive of SCCL told The Hindu. However, the average daily production in March (2.08 lakh tonnes) was less compared to February (2.16 lakh tonnes). In March 2021, the daily production was 2.06 lakh tonnes.
Notwithstanding the company’s performance during the last two years, the SCCL authorities have kept an ambitious production target of 72 MT for 2022-23 and 72 MT for 2023-24. “Even to achieve the 72 MT target, we need to scale up our performance considerably as it’s about 11% higher compared to the production in 2021-22,” the executive admitted, and said that their confidence to achieve the target stems from the plans to start mining operations in Naini block in Odisha soon.
During the current fiscal (2022-23), the company has plans to start mining of coal from Venkatesh Khani opencast in Kothagudem area, Ramagundam opencast in RG-3 Area, Rompedu opencast in Yellandu area and Goleti opencast in Bellampally area in addition to Naini.
